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About This Page - For Contributors

The intention of this page is to provide a starting point for beginners and to direct them to the kind of information a person would need in order to start doing something useful or interesting with a Raspberry Pi.

It is not intended to contain or replicate much of the information already available on-line or elsewhere in the wiki, however please create new wiki pages and link them here if there is information beginners will find useful (similarly any section which grows too much here, should be separated into new pages as and when needed)!

At the moment building up ideas of content of typical things beginners will want to know and the kind of things they will want to do first.

If you've done all that, and you are wondering what next...welcome and read on!

References needed (idea for new section Living Without RPi, which can guide users or link to info to users who haven't got RPis)
Link to emulation builds or live linux cds setup for beginners (RacyPy2 for example)

If you don't have a Raspberry Pi yet, you can still try things out, see xxxx for details.

What is Linux and why not use Windows?

Linux is an operating system just like Windows, however, unlike Windows (which needs a set hardware requirement to run i.e. One Size fits or get different hardware), Linux comes in many varieties and configurations which means you can usually find a flavour (or Distribution) which fits your hardware big or small / fast or slow.

The Raspberry Pi is not suited to running Windows due to its hardware, but there are plenty of Linux Distributions which fit nicely. In addition to this, most Distributions of Linux are free, however Windows can cost many times the price of the Raspberry Pi itself.

Chances are you already have Linux running in your home without you even knowing it, since it is commonly used in modern TVs, Freeview and cable boxes to run things and ensure your recording of Inbetweeners or Prison Break gets done!

Basic Debian RPi Setup

When you first turn on your Raspberry Pi with it's fresh Debian image on the SD card, you may have to make some minor adjustments to the OS configuration files to suit your location. The default location setting (locale) is the UK.

You can alter this with

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

There are quite a lot of options - many people will want to use the UTF-8 variant for their locale. This will also allow you to set anomalous cases
like English keyboard but Danish locale.

Selecting All locales will generate all possible locales, take a very long time and use a great deal of space. Generate only those you wish to use.

The command above will open a list which begins

aa_DJ [Ambala, for Djibouti] ISO-8059-1 and goes down to zu_._UTF8 UTF-81 [Zulu for S. Africa]

You have various options for each language - UTF-8 is probably the most useful worldwide - Unicode characters.

Scroll down using a down arrow key, toggle with a space bar to select.

Keyboard Mapping

If different letters appear on-screen from that which you typed, you need to reconfigure you keyboard settings. In Debian, from a command line type:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Follow the prompts. Then restart your RasPi.Or: From the command line type:

Follow the prompts to finish the config. The change should be immediate.

Intro to the CLI (Command Line Interface)

You will need to use the Command Line Interface at some point in your management of the RPi. The command line interface is a powerful way to interact with the Raspberry Pi and is well worth learning some basic commands to get started with.

Adding more software to your Raspberry Pi

You will probably want to add software to your Raspberry Pi. Here you can find out how to do it.
Adding Software

Adding USB Storage to Your Raspberry Pi

Sooner or later, you're going to run out of room on the SD card used to boot up your Raspberry Pi. For a tutorial on how to connect USB flash drives and hard drives to your Pi to expand storage, see: Adding USB Drives to a Raspberry Pi

Beginner Projects

Here are a few things you can try out with your Raspberry Pi, in most cases all you'll need is your SD Card loaded with a particular preconfigured OS Distribution.

It will be worth getting a few spare SD Cards if you think you will switch between setups regularly or become familiar with how to back up and restore your card.

Reference needed - a good guide on how to backup and restore cards or software to do this easily

Media Player

With this configuration you will typically have the Raspberry Pi connected to a TV or large monitor and a source of videos/music/photos etc you wish to play (i.e. Internet/hard-drive/local network etc).

Entering "sudo apt-get install abiword-common" into a terminal will install AbiWord, a lighter weight but still fully functional word processor

More information needed

Your Own Pet Project!

The sky is the limit really, with some time and effort any number of projects can be achieved.

Even if you don't have the skill to do it yourself, you can join like minded people by getting involved with one of the numerous groups in the Community Section, also within the Education pages or learn what you need in from the Guides & Tutorials sections.

Of course, if you do anything interesting then please let us know in the Projects section.

Living Without RPi

Even if you do not have any Raspberry Pi hardware there are a number things you can do to learn about linux, programming or even controlling hardware.

Using Linux

You can install a version of Linux on most computers, and many you will be able to "try out" Linux by using a "Live CD" - this will start your computer up running from a CD or DVD and run Linux (without installing anything to the computer itself).

RacyPy - This is a simple LiveCD of Puppy Linux which includes some basic programming languages and a light-weight graphical user interface (GUI).

Trying Programming

Many of the programming languages you can use on the Raspberry Pi can be installed on a Windows or Mac machine. Just visit the websites of the languages you are interested in and see if they have an installer for your operating system.

Controlling Hardware

As discussed in the Easy GPIO Hardware & Software tutorials, there are lots of alternative hardware you can use to experiment with (some as little as $5).